Pale Garden
The core of 1.21.4’s new content is the “Pale Garden” biome. This is where you will find all of the new blocks, items, mobs, and other features that were added. It is a spooky forest bathed in light gray, devoid of most other colors. It features lots of moss, Pale Oak trees, a new flower called an Eyeblossom, and a new mob, the Creaking. Resin is also introduced, which leads to a whole host of new decorative blocks, but we’ll get to how to obtain those later.
The Pale garden is filled with eerie sounds, dense foliage, and an overall haunting atmosphere. When you enter the garden, all in-game music will stop playing, and no new music will start until you leave. There are no animals in the pale garden. Pale Moss covers much of the ground, and hanging pale moss generates on the trees, making the interior of this biome quite dense.
The eerie Pale Garden in all of its de-saturated glory.
The Creaking
At night, a new mob called the Creaking may spawn in the pale garden. It is a tall, slender being that appears as if it is made of wood and bark. If you never make eye contact with the Creaking, it will remain safely dormant. But once you do, it will start stalking you until you figure out how to defeat it. While you look directly at it, it will not move. It is completely immune to damage. When you’re not looking at it, it will pursue you (or any nearby player) and attack, unless it has not been activated. Illagers are scared of the Creaking, and will flee from it.
Steve watch out! The Creakings are behind you! OH MY GOD HE HAS HIS AIRPODS IN! HE CAN'T HEAR US!
Creaking Heart
To defeat the Creaking, you must find the Creaking Heart block that the mob is linked to. When you attack a Creaking, it will make a trail of particles between itself and its heart, which is found inside of a Pale Oak tree’s trunk. To defeat the Creaking, simply follow the trail to the Creaking Heart, and break it. The Creaking will then twitch and crumble, never to return. …unless you place the Creaking Heart between 2 Pale Oak logs again. Actually harvesting the block requires a Silk Touch tool. This means you can effectively transport the Creaking easily, and spawn it again wherever you’d like.
There are a few unique behaviors of the Creaking Heart. The most interesting is that if a comparator is attached to the creaking heart, it will output a redstone signal proportional to the distance the Creaking is from the Heart.
Here's the Creaking next to its Heart. Notice the resin clumps surrounding the heart!
Eyeblossoms
Eyeblossoms are flowers found inside the Pale Garden. They open and close their “eye” depending on the time of day. At night they are open, and they are closed during the day, making an animation and sound when opening or closing. While open, Eyeblossoms will glow. Bees are attracted to open Eyeblossoms, however they will become poisoned if they attempt to interact with them. You can harvest open or closed eyeblossoms and they will remain in that state in your inventory. Placing them in the nether or end will have them remain in the state in which you harvested them. Holding an open Eyeblossom in your hand will also attract Bees to you, similar to other mobs and their favorite foods.
Pale Oak
The Pale Oak tree, other than the previously mentioned Creaking Heart and its mechanics, is a relatively normal tree. The light gray wood can be crafted into all of the things other types of wood can be. Notably, the leaves can spawn gray leaf particles on the bottom side. The saplings need to be planted in a 2x2 square to grow Pale Oak trees. Player-planted trees can not come with Pale Hanging Moss, Pale Moss patches, or Creaking Hearts, while naturally-generated trees can.
Pale Moss
Another decorative addition is the moss. We have Pale Moss blocks, carpet, and Pale Hanging Moss. Pale Moss Carpet can grow up to two blocks from the starting point, and can be bone mealed to grow further. Pale Hanging Moss can grow on the underside of foliage or logs in the Pale Garden. It can be bone mealed to grow, but does not grow on its own. It also emits soft ambient sounds.
An example of what the pale oak wood can be used for, along with some pale moss carpet.
Resin
So far I’ve left out a large part of the new update - resin. Starting with resin clumps, this material can be used for a plethora of decorative items. You can obtain resin from a few sources. The main source is the Creaking. Attacking a Creaking will cause its heart to spawn a few resin clumps on logs nearby the heart. This can happen once every 5 seconds. Breaking a Creaking Heart also drops a few resin clumps.
The clumps themselves can be placed on any full block face for decoration. A full block of resin can be used as a storage block for clumps as well. You can smelt clumps into Resin Bricks, similar to smelting clay into bricks. The bricks can be used for armor trim or to be crafted into resin brick blocks, which have a huge amount of uses as decorative blocks. Resin brick blocks can be crafted into all of your standard block types: slabs, stairs, walls, and chiseled bricks.
Resin bricks. Shiny!
The Rest
Also included in this update is a huge list of changes and fixes, which I won’t fully cover in this article. There are some minor changes like pet collar color inheritance and changes to how mobs pick up items, and some large sets of changes to datapack formats. You can check out the full list of changes in the official minecraft.net changelog here.
This is quite a large set of new features for a minor version update, and I am excited to dive in and see how I can use the new decorative items in my builds. If you’d like to check out the new update with some friends, you can grab a smooth-running vanilla Minecraft server on the cheapest plan we offer here! What’s your favorite part of this update? Let me know in our Discord server!